ICYMI: The Last 2 Weeks in Black Writing (8/4 - 8/16)

- HBW collected tributes from a number of important writers and scholars to bid farewell to Chancellor Bob Hemenway, who - among many other accomplishments - wrote a foundational literary biography of Zora Neale Hurston.

- ForHarriet shared 7 Black Women Science Fiction Writers Everyone Should Know. (One of the authors, Nalo Hopkinson, has a new short story collection out right now.)


- Roxane Gay opens this conversation with Ta-Nehisi Coates by noting the frequent comparisons of Coates to James Baldwin. 5 days earlier, Vinson Cunningham wrote about why Coates isn't the James Baldwin of our time.

- Baldwin or not, Coates did make it onto President Obama's summer reading list.

- Beverly Jenkins spoke to NPR Books about writing historical romances with black protagonists.

- Issa Rae, author of The Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl, was profiled in the New York Times in "The Misadventures of Issa Rae."

- Walter Mosley, author of the Easy Rawlins series, sat down with NPR for conversations about the Watts Riots and his Southern roots. 

ICYMI: The Last 3 Weeks in Black Writing (7/13 - 8/3)

The HBW Blog didn't post ICYMI for 3 weeks while staff members were preparing for and working on the NEH Summer Institute Black Poetry After the Black Arts Movement. Since it has now concluded, we return to the regular blog schedule!

 - HBW celebrated the lives of Norman Jordan and Paul Vesey (Samuel Allen), two great writers and thinkers.

- Jerry Ward discussed the effect of the digital medium on Asili Ya Nadhiri's poetic performance.

- Dr. Ward also wondered if studies about how literature effects the brain have been conducted by his colleagues in Chinese universities.

- Dr. Howard Rambsy II rounded up his thoughts and reflections from HBW & NEH's recent summer seminar Black Poetry After the Black Arts Movement over at Cultural Front. (He also posted this excellent piece about book endorsements, spurred by Toni Morrison's words about Ta-Nehisi Coates's Between the World and Me.)

- Justina Ireland notes the privilege underlying many critics' reviews of black social commentary like Coates's book.

- Relatedly, The Atlantic has been hosting a Between the World and Me book club, the last installment of which goes up today. Read them here (covering chapters 1 & 2), here (chapters 3 & 4), and here (chapter 5 & 6).

- Errin Whack takes issue with the idea that Atticus Finch's more overt racism in Go Set a Watchman damages To Kill a Mockingbird. Rather, she says it is a more complex, adult view on racism.

- The extraordinary Roxane Gay writes about letting go of the love she once had for Bill Cosby in light of what she now knows about his crimes.

- John Metta published "I, Racist," the text of a "congregational reflection" he gave to an all-white church congregation in late June about why he stopped speaking to white people about race for a long time - and why he's starting again.

- While at Comic-Con to promote March: Book Two, a graphic novel about the Civil Rights Movement, Representative John Lewis of Georgia recreated the outfit he wore in the march on Selma.

- If you live in Douglas County, Kansas, submissions for the Langston Hughes Creative Writing Award are now open!

ICYMI: The Last 2 Weeks in Black Writing (6/29 - 7/12)

- HBW was saddened by the passing of author, journalist, educator and GEMS subject John A. Williams, whose invaluable contributions to African American letters cannot be overlooked.

- Houston A. Baker reminisced about his relationship with Williams, who was "NOT...an easy person to get along with" but who served as "an exemplar of what can be achieved in the creative writing life."


- Maryemma Graham reflected on the life and work of Margaret Walker on the 100th anniversary of Walker's birth, both celebrating her accomplishments and lamenting her relative obscurity.

- Poet Claudia Rankine talked to The Guardian about the inspiration behind her collection Citizen and the power of refusing to ignore acts of covert racism.

- Slate explored Frederick Douglass's 1852 Fourth of July speech (really given on the fifth of July), originally given to the Ladies' Anti-Slavery Society of Rochester, New York.

- Poet Nikki Finney reads a beautiful original poem about the removal of the Confederate flag from the South Carolina State House. The video features footage from the removal.

- Ta-Nehisi Coates spoke to NPR about his new book, Between the World and Me, which addresses his son about the toll of being black in racist society. In this insightful review, Shani O. Hilton points out that Coates's book is really about being black and male in racist society.

- Dolen Perkins-Valdez spoke with Book Riot about her new novel, Balm, set in Civil War-era Chicago.

- Until August 26, you can listen to live recordings of all of August Wilson's American Century Cycle, performed by astounding vocal casts.

ICYMI: The Last Two Weeks in Black Writing (6/15 - 6/28)

- HBW remembered Dr. Jim Miller, a foundational scholar of twentieth-century African American cultural politics. doris davenport contributed a beautiful poem memorializing her friend.

- New U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch took her oath of office using Frederick Douglass's Bible.

- The National Endowment for the Arts asked several artists and creators, including playwright Katori Hall and Sherri Young of the African American Shakespeare Company, why the arts matter.

- Just hours before the Charleston Massacre, Gene Demby wrote about the need to balance the seriousness of black life with jokes and joy (such as the #AskRachel hashtag).

- Nell Irvin Painter, author of the The History of White People, lays out a brief history of whiteness to give context to Rachel Dolezal and the Charleston Massacre.

- Edwidge Danticat and Junot Diaz joined forces to condemn the Dominican Republic's forcible removal of citizen of Haitian descent. (And Book Riot has a list of suggested reading to help you understand the situation.)

- If you missed out on this year's Juneteenth celebrations, Book Riot has a list of reading suggestions for you.

- Justina Ireland helpfully outlines how to analyze white characters in literature.

- Another white actor is taking over the role of Peter Parker in the next Spider-Man film, but in the comics, black Latino Miles Morales is the official new Spider-Man.

ICYMI: Charleston Edition

In the wake of the Charleston Massacre, the HBW Blog offers this compendium of suggested reading, in no particular order.

- The Holy City: Charleston, a Remembrance, by Délana R.A. Dameron

- BK Nation Statement on the Charleston, South Carolina Church Massacre, by Kevin Powell


- No Sanctuary in Charleston, by Patricia Williams Lessane

- Letter to My Mother After Charleston, by Carvell Wallace

- Denmark Vesey and the History of Charleston's 'Mother Emanuel' Church, by Kat Chow

- For Charleston's Emanuel AME Church, shooting is another painful chapter in a rich history, by Sarah Kaplan

- Dylann Roof and the Stubborn Myth of the Colorblind Millennial, by Gene Demby

- Why I Can't Forgive Dylann Roof, by Roxane Gay

- I'm Not a South Carolinian; I'm the Rebirth of the Black Radical, by Riley Wilson

Feel free to suggest additions to the list.

ICYMI: Last Week in Black Writing (6/5 - 6/14)

- Sesi Magazine recommends 21 Books Every Black Girl Should Read (plus one extra).

- First Lady Michelle Obama continues to be an excellent graduation speaker, speaking frankly about the pressure to challenge racial stereotypes.

- The American Black Film Festival is thriving in its nineteenth year.

- Kendrick Lamar visited a ninth-grade English classroom that was using his album To Pimp a Butterfly as a way to help students understand Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye.

- Dolen Perkins-Valdez spoke to NPR about her new Chicago-set novel, Balm, and her interest in exploring the effects of the Civil War on places that were "peripheral" to traditional narratives about that war.

- This post at Book Riot mulls over books that challenge the idea of "black cool" and the way that idea relates to structural inequality.

- Also on Book Riot, a post about giving voice to black youth in YA and why it's important to do so.

- The bizarre, infuriating saga of Rachel Dolezal, with links to excellent think-pieces - and links to the #AskRachel Twitter hashtag, which Black Twitter used to challenge Rachel to prove her blackness bona fides.

ICYMI: The Last Month in Black Writing (5/8 - 6/4)

- Black Words Matter: Poems by Baltimore Students took place 2 weeks after the death of Freddie Gray, allowing students space to write about police violence and racism. (The work of four students is shared at the link.)

- Morgan Jerkins wrote about re-reading Claudia Rankin's Citizen: An American Lyric in the wake of #BaltimoreRising.

- Roxane Gay took on New York Times critic Janet Maslin's summer reading list, which featured entirely white authors (or, as Jason Parham put it, which reached "peak caucacity"). In response to Maslin's list, several sites published lists of novels by authors of color that you could also read this summer: check them out at The Root, The Grio, and Book Riot. 

- Relatedly, here's what's going on with #WeNeedDiverseBooks a year after the overwhelming whiteness of BookCon spawned the campaign - and here are 25 books by authors of color that were featured at BookExpo 2015.

- Gay also wrote about how thrilled she was that Crazy Rich Asians author Kevin Kwan has a new novel, China Rich Girlfriend, out soon.

- Al Letson wrote about the need for diverse voices (literally) in public radio for Transom, re-published at NPR.

- Troy L. Wiggins wrote about why he read books only by black men in May.

- The Humans of New York Twitter account has had some fantastic entries related to black writing recently: check out two of the best here and here.

- Tuckson Health Connections and the Howard University Department of English announced the winners of the "Healing Stories Creative Writing Contest," a contest that allows communities of color to talk about their experiences of health and community.

- Genesis Mendoza shared "13 Young Black Poets You Should Know," complete with poem recommendations for each specific poet.

- First Lady Michelle Obama gave a commencement speech at Tuskegee University in which she talked frankly about her own experiences with racism, particularly since her husband became President.

- Speaking of President Obama, his presidential library is set for Chicago.

- In other news about the President and First Lady, a film about the Obamas' first date, called Southside with You, is in development.

- In more black film news, Queen Latifah gave a fantastic interview about playing Bessie Smith in HBO's Bessie.

- Biracial author Mat Johnson talks with NPR about growing up "mulatto" and his new novel Loving Day (also enthusiastically recommended on the Pop Culture Happy Hour podcast).

- From Planet Money by way of NPR's CodeSwitch, a fascinating look at Tom Burrell, who helped change the way that advertisers marketed to black audiences.

- Slate Academy debuted The History of American Slavery, featuring scholarship from Jamelle Bouie, Rebecca Onion, and Henry Louis Gates, Jr.  The academy features podcasts, articles, book excerpts, and online "class meetings" for those who enroll.

- NPR featured a Kickstarter-funded children's book about a queer black boy who dreams of going to space, Kendrick Daye and Myles E. Johnson's Large Fears.

- Suggestions for future reading if you loved Jacqueline Woodson's Brown Girl Dreaming or Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's Americanah.

And a few older pieces we missed before:

- Poet and teacher Clint Smith gave a moving TEDTalk on "How to Raise a Black Son in America."

- Saeed Jones, literary editor at Buzzfeed, wrote about navigating mostly white literary spaces in "Self-Portrait of the Artist as Ungrateful Black Writer."

- Paramount Studios is sending copies of Selma to every high school in the U.S.

ICYMI: This Week in Black Writing (5/1 - 5/7)

- Portia Owusu added a young scholar's perspective to the chorus of voices weighing in on Toni Morrison's new novel, God Help the Child, which debuted at #3 on NPR's Bestsellers List for hardcover fiction.

- HBW talked with Crystal Bradshaw, creative writer and HBW staff communications, about her historical fiction novel about the life of her great-great-great-great-great-grandmother Eliza.


- Book Riot's Morgan Jenkins offers up some advice on how to write characters of color well.  (Tip #1: "Don't. Just kidding.")

- Mulling over famous figures who deserve a YA book treatment, Alison Peters highlights Ilyasah Shabazz and Kekla Magoon's recent young adult book X: A Novel, which explores Malcolm X's childhood.

- Shonda Rhimes and Dee Rees are adapting Isabel Wilkerson's The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration (2010) for a limited-run series on FX.

- Over on The Root, this letter-writer wonders if their family really is related to famous slave-rebellion leader Nat Turner.  Henry Louis Gates, Jr. and Meaghan Siekman provide a fascinating, detailed answer.

- Stacey Patton, a senior reporter with The Chronicle of Higher Education, writes about how faculty on dual appointments, who are often faculty of color in ethnic studies positions, face additional barriers to achieving tenure.

And more reading for #BaltimoreRising:

- "Beyond Hashtag Activism," by David A. Graham
- "Have They Died in Vain?" by Ray Haberski
- "Is It an 'Uprising' or a 'Riot'? Depends on Who's Watching," by Karen Grigsby Bates
- "Cops Charged in Freddie Gray's Death Receive Lower Bails than Teen Rioter," by Daniel Politi

ICYMI: This Week in Black Writing (4/24 - 4/30)

- HBW kicked off the week by rounding up some of the best news stories in black writing from the past few months in a special We-Totally-Missed-It Edition of our weekly #ICYMI.

- Jerry Ward reviewed Toni Morrison's newest novel, God Help the Child, noting how one of the great pleasures of reading Morrison is how doing so allows readers "to construct one's own knowledge of how history revolves."

 - Reviews of God Help the Child have been all over the internet the past week; one of the best is Roxane Gay's evaluation for The Guardian. (It's a big week for Gay: her essay collection Bad Feminist was just chosen as the first-year Common Book at UCLA.)

 - An adaptation of Larry Duplechan's Blackbird will be the first movie available through the Urban Movie Channel, a streaming service created by BET founder Robert L. Johnson that's being touted as the "black Netflix."

- In black film news, Viola Davis will play Harriet Tubman in HBO's forthcoming biopic, and Wendell Pierce is slated to portray Clarence Thomas in HBO's Confirmation, about Thomas's 1991 Supreme Court confirmation hearings.

And finally, links to important context and response to #BaltimoreUprising:

- "In Baltimore, a Cry for Justice for Freddie Gray," by Ericka Blount Danois
- "The Mysterious Death of Freddie Gray," by David A. Graham
- "Baltimore's Fire," by Jamelle Bouie
- "We Disagree with Any Implication that Freddie Gray Severed His Own Spinal Cord," by Adam Chandler
- "Baltimore and the State of American Cities," by Jelani Cobb
- "Nonviolence as Compliance," by Ta-Nehisi Coates
- "Thugs. Students. Rioters. Fans: Media's Subtle Racism in Unrest Coverage," by Akiba Solomon 
- A full transcript of President Obama's Tuesday remarks about Baltimore
- Code Switch collected the readings people are sharing in the wake of Freddie Gray's death; there are more on #twitterpoetryclub and #readingsforbmore.

Bonus ICYMI: The We-Totally-Missed-It Edition

HBW introduced its #ICYMI posts a while back to give our readers a chance to catch up on some of the most interesting stories in black writing each week. But the internet is vast, and like anyone else, sometimes we miss out on great content. So today, instead of a regular post, we've got a round-up of stories we missed the first time around. Enjoy!



- NPR's Code Switch blog interviewed James McGrath Morris about his new book Eye on the Struggle: Ethel Payne, First Lady of the Black Press, about pioneering African American journalist Ethel Payne.

- Val James, the first black U.S.-born player in the National Hockey League, wrote about the tremendous racism he faced in his 13-year career in his new autobiography Black Ice: The Val James Story.

- New Yorker theatre critic Hilton Als pays tribute to the art and politics of actor and activist Paul Robeson.

- Ayana Mathis and Pankaj Mishra discussed now-infamous James Baldwin's characterization of Native Son as a "protest novel."

- Marlon James, recent winner of the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award for fiction, shared his story of the challenges of growing up gay in Jamaica and finding himself in Minnesota.

- HBW's own Jerry Ward isn't the only person loving Empire. Book Riot offered up some suggestions about what to read while we count the days until season 2.

- Obie Award-winning playwright Branden Jacobs-Jenkins discussed his "obligation" to confront race and history in an interview with All Things Considered.

- The New York Times talked with author Paul Beatty, who just published the novel The Sellout, about looking for humor in writing about race.  A lot of race discussion, Beatty said, is "either too down-homey or too earnest or too something.  Too a lot of things."

- And finally, here's the full transcript of President Obama's speech from Selma, Alabama, on the 50th anniversary of Bloody Sunday.

ICYMI: This Week in Black Writing (4/17 - 4/23)

- Jerry Ward reviewed Earle V. Bryant's Byline Richard Wright, which collects pieces from Wright's journalism career.

- HBW visited #CLA2015, and we've got the recap (with pictures).

 - Kara Walker reviewed God Help the Child, Toni Morrison's newest novel. Walker celebrates "Morrison's obvious joy in language" but writes that the novel "left [her] hungering for warmth."
 
- Michael Eric Dyson published a controversial take on Cornel West in the New Republic.  (Colorlines posted a survey of responses to the piece here and links to West's response here.) 

- Karen Grigsby Brown used the verbal sparring between Dyson and West as the jumping-off point for "A History of Beef Between Black Artists, Writers, and Intellectuals."

- Last year, Morgan Jenkins asked Junot Diaz for advice about how to survive as a black writer in a "blindingly white MFA program," and he responded with a thoughtful and empathetic message. In "To Junot Diaz," Jenkins wrote about what's happened since.

- Playwright Katori Hall talked about creating plays by and for black women in the Washington Post.

- After leaked e-mails revealed that Ben Affleck pressured producers to remove an slave-owning ancestor from his segment on Find Your Roots, Henry Louis Gates, Jr. announced that he'll be writing about the full story in his forthcoming book.  (Gene Demby, lead blogger for NPR's Code Switch, talked about the story on Morning Edition, and Affleck offered up his take here.)

- In a 44-page document, the family of Michael Brown filed a lawsuit against the city of Ferguson.

- Traci Currie of the Phoenix Rising Collective wrote about interviewing--or trying to interview--Jamaican lesbian poet Staceyann Chin and what it taught her about the "life-changing interviews [that] occur during the silent moments."

- In the greatest news ever to be great, 7-year-old Natalie McGriff (and her mother Angie Nixon) created a comic book about a young girl who gets magic powers from her Afro puffs, The Adventures of Moxie Girl, and won over $16,000 to publish it.

ICYMI: The Last 3 Weeks in Black Writing (3/27 - 4/16)

- Jerry Ward, Jr. wrote about seeing Richard Wright's haiku in performance at Xavier University of Louisiana.

- Jackson State University's Margaret Walker Center is sponsoring a year of Walker-centric programming, This is My Century: 100 Years of Margaret Walker, 1915-2015.

-  C. Liegh McInnis contributed to our Margaret Walker coverage with a consideration of Walker's famous poem "For My People" as the fulfillment of her literary manifesto.

- KU English Ph.D. student Creighton N. Brown recapped Dr. Giselle Anatol's recent talk about her new book, Things That Fly in the Night.

- We also recapped the Langston Hughes Center's screening of Selma and its KU scholars' panel discussion about the film.  (You can watch director Ava DuVernay's keynote from the South by Southwest Film festival here.)

- Brian Russell Roberts and Keith Foulcher announce the publication of Indonesian Notebook: A Sourcebook on Richard Wright, Modern Indonesia, and the Bandung Conference, forthcoming from Duke University Press in spring 2016.  Indonesian Notebook contains a newly discovered Indonesian lecture by Richard Wright, "The Artist and His Problems."  (Read an excerpt of the project published in PMLA here.)

- Novelist Marlon James won the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award for fiction for his novel A Brief History of Seven Killings.  The Anisfield-Wolf awards are "for literature that confronts racism and examines diversity."

- With the publication of God Help the Child just a few days away, Rachel Kaadzi Ghansah profiled Toni Morrison for the New York Times.  Read that article here, then listen to Morrison read an excerpt from her new novel here.

ICYMI: The Last 2 Weeks in Black Writing (3/13 - 3/26)

- Stefanie Torres and Jennifer Colatosti recapped Kenton Rambsy's Hall Center talk, "'Characteristics of Negro Expression': Digital Humanities and African American Short Stories."

- Early in March at KU, former U.S. Poet Laureate Natasha Trethewey read poetry exploring the intersections of race, gender, science, and family.

- Buzzfeed staff member Tracy Clayton compiled some of Black Twitter's best responses to Starbucks' Race Together Initiative with #NewStarbucksDrinks.

- Book Riot recommended nonfiction reads for people who loved Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's Americanah.

- Caryl Phillips (the subject of Jerry Ward's post on Cambridge) talked to NPR about his new novel, The Lost Child, an updated take on Wuthering Heights.

- Toni Morrison urged artists to create even under difficult and painful social conditions in an article for The Nation's 150th anniversary issue.

ICYMI: This Week in Black Writing (3/6-3/12)

- Hoke Glover pondered poetry's artistic segregation and the role of Black institutions.

- Jerry W. Ward, Jr., considered how Margaret Walker's biography of Richard Wright, Daemonic Genius, revealed Walker's genius, as well.


- John Lewis, representative of Georgia's District 5, took part in the original march in Selma, Alabama, in 1965.  He was back in Selma for the march's 50th anniversary, live-tweeting his experience for #Selma50.

- After MSNBC's Morning Joe blamed SAE members' racist chant on rap music, Black Twitter created #RapAlbumsThatCausedSlavery.

- Rebecca Gross interviewed Toni Morrison about the importance of taking artistic risks, even when those risks may fail.

- Inspired by #BlackOutDay on Twitter and Tumblr, Kelly Jensen spotlights three YA novels whose cover art features black characters.  

ICYMI: The Last Two Weeks in Black Writing (2/20 - 3/5)

- KU Ph.D. student Amanda M. Sladek considers Toussaint L'Ouverture and the problematic "slave narrative" genre for the HBW Emerging Scholars series.

- Jerry W. Ward, Jr. remembered his former classmate Anne Moody, author of the memoir Coming of Age in Mississippi.

- HBW recapped the kick-off of the Black Literary Suite: Black Writers with a Kansas Connection.

- Thabiti Lewis considered Sam Greenlee's novel The Spook Who Sat by the Door in the context of the urban revolts of the 1960s and today.

- Inspired by Joel Christian Gill's #28daysarenotenough, Book Riot's Derek Attig gave suggestions for Black History Books for the Whole Year.

- Poet and memoirist Maya Angelou is to be honored with a U.S. Post Office "forever" stamp.

- Ilyasah Shabazz, daughter of Malcolm X and co-author of the new young adult novel X, wonders what her father would have to say about today's activists.

- Not strictly "writing," but too wonderful not to include: Derrick Clifton talks about the "Because of Them We Can" ad campaign that dresses black children up as their inspirations.

- KU Associate Professor of English Giselle Anatol discussed her new book, The Things That Fly in the Night: Female Vampires in Literature of the Circum-Caribbean and African Diaspora, with KU News.

- Tickets are still available for the final three performances of KU Theatre's production of A Raisin in the Sun on March 6-8.

ICYMI: This Week in Black Writing (2/14 - 2/20)

- Jerry W. Ward, Jr. told us how Shakespeare lives on in FOX's new show Empire.

- We previewed the upcoming HBW event Black Literary Suite: Black Writers with a Kansas Connection, kicking off on Wednesday, February 25, from 3 - 4:30 p.m., on the fourth floor of Watson Library.

- NPR Code Switch blogger and Tufts University professor of history Peniel E. Joseph put together a list of works that explore "the importance of radical black political self-determination in the face of state violence and institutional racism."

- Rutgers professor of Women and Gender Studies and Africana Studies Brittney Cooper celebrates the life and work of Pauli Murray, who coined the term "Jane Crow" and helped break legal ground for women of color and queer folks in the middle decades of the last century.

- On February 18, Toni Morrison celebrated her 84th birthday. Audre Lorde would have been 81.

- Anne Moody, author of the memoir Coming of Age in Mississippi, passed away at the age of 74.